My friend and mentor Professor Ben Nunnally (of UNC-Charlotte) talks with a local TV personality about the mergers that are happening right now.
Friday, September 12, 2014
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Letter in The Wall Street Journal today
[This is eerily similar, but not exactly the same as, my letter that appears in The Wall Street Journal, page A16, September 9, 2014]
Online University Education Grows, With Some Bumps
I wish John B. Taylor's view of online
instruction could be taken as a model for moving forward in Web
education, but I don't think much of what he discovered applies to the
vision of online instruction held by administrators at some smaller
universities ("A New Twist in Online Learning at Stanford," op-ed, Sept. 2).
Our
department began offering both graduate and undergraduate students the
opportunity to earn finance degrees online several years ago. Now most
of our students take both types of courses simultaneously to finish
their programs of study in a timely fashion. Dr. Taylor mentions that he
made videos of his lectures and then handed them over to "producers" to
mix in other content. At our university the "producer" role is limited
to fighting fires due to understaffing, and faculty are left to do
things on their own (if we get the time to do them at all). We
discovered too late that a good number of our students couldn't take
more than one online class per semester because they were in the U.S. on
student visas. All students in online courses receive the same credit
as traditional students, with the result being that the reputations of
both modalities are commingled in the minds of students, employers,
alumni, faculty and administrators. In our experience it seems that none
of those constituencies take online course work as seriously as
traditional instruction.
Finally, our business school went through accreditation review in 2013 and the online courses created the biggest issue for us.
Timothy B. Michael, Ph.D.
University of Houston - Clear Lake
[end quote]
Boy howdy the phone has been busy today.
[end quote]
Boy howdy the phone has been busy today.
I've received some questions from folks today asking why I didn't mention proctoring in my letter. Well, I DID mention proctoring, but it was edited out. So I've taken the opportunity to mention the fact that we weren't allowed to proctor in the online comments section. I also mentioned the class size issue in a separate comment. For those of you with subscriptions, I recommend reading the comments and/or adding your own perspective.
Friday, August 8, 2014
Dilbert's creator thinks the government should create an "investing pyramid" similar to the "food pyramid"
Yeah, because that Food Pyramid has worked so well...
Hey, he has a degree in economics, people, and he's not afraid to use it...
Seriously, though, he may be on to something. Certainly people need to understand that passive investing remains a pretty good choice, if not perfect by any means. But does the government need to remind folks of this? Perhaps they could subsidize and update of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" or write a Cliff Notes version for the masses. Burton Malkiel told us about how the market worked more than 40 years ago, and yet so many people still miss out.
Good thing for financial advisors, not so much for investors (unless they're paying for piece of mind, which I imagine that many are). Scott Adams suggests that financial advisors be required to disclose that their services have been proven scientifically unnecessary, but that has been understood for a while I think. Perhaps researchers should go back to trying to understand why people invest in the first place.
I'm not an investment advisor, but it seems to me that paying for investment advice in this day and age is kinda iffy. Even sketchy, perhaps.
Hey, he has a degree in economics, people, and he's not afraid to use it...
Seriously, though, he may be on to something. Certainly people need to understand that passive investing remains a pretty good choice, if not perfect by any means. But does the government need to remind folks of this? Perhaps they could subsidize and update of "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" or write a Cliff Notes version for the masses. Burton Malkiel told us about how the market worked more than 40 years ago, and yet so many people still miss out.
Good thing for financial advisors, not so much for investors (unless they're paying for piece of mind, which I imagine that many are). Scott Adams suggests that financial advisors be required to disclose that their services have been proven scientifically unnecessary, but that has been understood for a while I think. Perhaps researchers should go back to trying to understand why people invest in the first place.
I'm not an investment advisor, but it seems to me that paying for investment advice in this day and age is kinda iffy. Even sketchy, perhaps.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
The Success that is Houston (and Texas) in today's WSJ
WSJ has an op-ed today that outlines how and why Houston (and Texas) has outpaced the rest of the country in terms of growth, prosperity, etc. for the last two dozen years or so. I remind my students of this all the time, so I'm glad to see it in print yet again.
We currently live in the most successful economy within the most successful state in the union right now. The only real competition is DC, and we all know where THAT economic "growth" comes from. I know this sounds like John Kerry's dreaded "exceptionalism" but the numbers are what they are - Houston's been pretty successful, and there's more success to come as the energy industry ramps things up over the next five years.
I sure wish the authors would come back and look at some of the hair-brained things that Houston city government has done in the past 10 years, just for a sense of contrast. The light rail fiasco comes to mind as a great example of how to NOT do things.
We currently live in the most successful economy within the most successful state in the union right now. The only real competition is DC, and we all know where THAT economic "growth" comes from. I know this sounds like John Kerry's dreaded "exceptionalism" but the numbers are what they are - Houston's been pretty successful, and there's more success to come as the energy industry ramps things up over the next five years.
I sure wish the authors would come back and look at some of the hair-brained things that Houston city government has done in the past 10 years, just for a sense of contrast. The light rail fiasco comes to mind as a great example of how to NOT do things.
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Can flipping the classroom help students learn? Sure...
Just found this Slate article on classroom flipping.
If by "flipping the classroom" you mean "requiring students to actually come to class prepared," then the answer is a resounding "yes." If you mean "take all of the rigor out of the class and turn it into in-class group projects" then probably "no."
If by "flipping the classroom" you mean "requiring students to actually come to class prepared," then the answer is a resounding "yes." If you mean "take all of the rigor out of the class and turn it into in-class group projects" then probably "no."
Rasmussen: Only 20% of likely voters think global warming debate is over
Drudge today has a link to a Rasmussen poll showing that the overwhelming majority of likely voters think that the global warming debate isn't over yet. Better yet, they have a link to the questions so you can see that it wasn't done in some heavy-handed and sneaky way.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
John Cochrane on the failure of macroeconomics, Paul Krugman's fallacy
There's a great piece in today's WSJ, but of course it's behind a paywall. So here's an article that discusses it, with liberal quotes:
http://uneasymoney.com/2014/07/02/john-cochrane-on-the-failure-of-macroeconomics/
The best line is a reminder of how blinded some people can be when it serves their politics. Cochrane points out that even the great Paul Krugman has squinted under the lights of his high ideals:
"Paul Krugman writes that even the "broken windows fallacy ceases to be a fallacy," because replacing windows "can stimulate spending and raise employment."
Uh, the fallacy of the broken window is about how spending "government" money is supposed to be a stimulus of some sort. So Krugman actually asserts that it's a matter of scale? What? That must be drastically out of context, right?
Here's the full quote, and it doesn't help his case:
"This puts us in a world of topsy-turvy, in which many of the usual rules of economics cease to hold. Thrift leads to lower investment; wage cuts reduce employment; even higher productivity can be a bad thing. And the broken windows fallacy ceases to be a fallacy: something that forces firms to replace capital, even if that something seemingly makes them poorer, can stimulate spending and raise employment."
It just makes it even clearer that Krugman doesn't understand the fallacy, or perhaps how to use analogy. The fallacy itself doesn't suggest that the window needs replacing in the first place, but that the window was working perfectly and then was broken, needing replacing. It's the assertion that government spending is somehow separate from the private economy that's the fallacy - money spent to repair the window wouldn't have been used for any other investment. Of course replacing capital can help the economy, but only if it actually needs replacing. That's the breakdown I think.
No, Dr. Krugman, the fallacy of the broken windows is just that, and it doesn't change by scale or by how hard we wish it to change. In this case the window seems to broken enough to give a distorted view of reality.
http://uneasymoney.com/2014/07/02/john-cochrane-on-the-failure-of-macroeconomics/
The best line is a reminder of how blinded some people can be when it serves their politics. Cochrane points out that even the great Paul Krugman has squinted under the lights of his high ideals:
"Paul Krugman writes that even the "broken windows fallacy ceases to be a fallacy," because replacing windows "can stimulate spending and raise employment."
Uh, the fallacy of the broken window is about how spending "government" money is supposed to be a stimulus of some sort. So Krugman actually asserts that it's a matter of scale? What? That must be drastically out of context, right?
Here's the full quote, and it doesn't help his case:
"This puts us in a world of topsy-turvy, in which many of the usual rules of economics cease to hold. Thrift leads to lower investment; wage cuts reduce employment; even higher productivity can be a bad thing. And the broken windows fallacy ceases to be a fallacy: something that forces firms to replace capital, even if that something seemingly makes them poorer, can stimulate spending and raise employment."
It just makes it even clearer that Krugman doesn't understand the fallacy, or perhaps how to use analogy. The fallacy itself doesn't suggest that the window needs replacing in the first place, but that the window was working perfectly and then was broken, needing replacing. It's the assertion that government spending is somehow separate from the private economy that's the fallacy - money spent to repair the window wouldn't have been used for any other investment. Of course replacing capital can help the economy, but only if it actually needs replacing. That's the breakdown I think.
No, Dr. Krugman, the fallacy of the broken windows is just that, and it doesn't change by scale or by how hard we wish it to change. In this case the window seems to broken enough to give a distorted view of reality.
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